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VP Pence Talks Moon Return and Mars Mission at NASA
Vice President Mike Pence spoke at NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday about the agency's plans to send humans back to the moon for the first time in almost half a century and eventually on to Mars. He said: The next Americans who set foot on the Moon will start their journey by stepping through the NASA's Orion hatch. And this extraordinary spacecraft will one day bridge the gap between our planet and the next.
The International Space Station has been an unqualified success. Soon and very soon American astronauts will return to space on American rockets launched from American soil. America will not ever abandon the critical domain of space, we will open the way for innovators and development and we will lead once again in human exploration. Our administration is working tirelessly to put an American crew aboard the lunar orbital platform before the end of 2024. In a prepared statement, Pence added, "We're renewing our national commitment to discovery and exploration and write the next great chapter of our nation's journey into space. It's now the official policy of the US that we'll return to the Moon, put Americans on Mars and once again explore the farthest depths of outer space."
The International Space Station has been an unqualified success. Soon and very soon American astronauts will return to space on American rockets launched from American soil. America will not ever abandon the critical domain of space, we will open the way for innovators and development and we will lead once again in human exploration. Our administration is working tirelessly to put an American crew aboard the lunar orbital platform before the end of 2024. In a prepared statement, Pence added, "We're renewing our national commitment to discovery and exploration and write the next great chapter of our nation's journey into space. It's now the official policy of the US that we'll return to the Moon, put Americans on Mars and once again explore the farthest depths of outer space."
Then go to the Moon or Mars at your leisure.
1. Non-chemical propulsion
2. Nuclear powered
3. Rotating working/living quarters
4. Descent and ascent vehicles
5. Completely closed, long term life support
6. Magnetic Shielding against solar and other radiation
7. Whatever else is necessary so that it can just hang out in orbit and then be driven somewhere when you want.
Shooting people across the solar system in a tin can is stupid.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
like this:
https://www.buildtheenterprise...
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
On 11 December 2017 Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, the operative part of which is:
The paragraph beginning “Set far-reaching exploration milestones” is deleted and replaced with the following:
“Lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities. Beginning with missions beyond low-Earth orbit, the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations;”.
Now that Trump has done all the heavy lifting, signing a policy declaration, his work is done.
All of the stuff about having an actual program with funding and such are just minor details.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The technology does not exist to do such a thing.
The technology is basically just keeping the slow pace of incremental innovation that up to now has given us things like the ISS.
The main problem is that eventually reaching the point mentioned by the above poster is going to take at least several decades of progressive innovations and require multiple year to build each successive station, and that slowness doesn't fit into the short-term needed for a publicity stunt within the 1 or 2 cycles of 4 years each that your US politics has.
Meanwhile, shooting people in (single use) tin cans is somethings that can be done quickly enough to be a somewhat viable publicity stunt (despite being completely useless from the technological and scientific point of view)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
According to this guy, the moon (plus the sun and stars) were made in one day (the Earth took a bit longer) and are only a few thousand years old; what's the rush??
That's the point.
For instance...this is being worked on
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
actually, we had the technology to do it 50 years ago. Unfortunately we let that slip away. But, we can reclaim it and do it better now than we would have done it then.
"Governments have been dominated by the corporate entities and citizens have ceased to matter in public policy" true in
Non-chemical propulsion
Like what? There is no alternative to chemical propulsion for a huge ship like this nor for the ascent and descent vehicles and those vehicles are generally designed with a specific planet in mind because it is very expensive to move large masses of fuel around that you do not need.
Shooting people across the solar system in a tin can is stupid.
Not as stupid as sending them to an unknown solar system in a tin can which will not be technologically equipped to deal with it after taking millennia to get there. The problem is that by "real spaceship" you really mean "fictional spaceship that all the cool sci-fi shows have".
"start their journey by stepping through the NASA's Orion hatch."
The code for the keypad is 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42
Wikipedia article on the Lunar Orbital Platform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [Do check out #Critisisms section]
it's hard to talk about the sort of things the Republican party is doing without sounding like hyperbole. Nobody believes they would let a type 1 diabetic (e.g. born with it) die because they won't pay for his insulin. If you read off the stuff Dick Cheney was signing off on for Iraq when he was VP you just plain wouldn't believe it either. He funneled billions into companies he had investments in. It's almost cartoonishly evil.
There's a saying about telling a lie. If a lie's big enough folks can't believe it's a lie. It's like Gaslighting. You move the overton window so far so fast to the right that nobody sees it moving...
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But that was enough reason to get congress to open up the purse strings.
Every president this millennium has said that they want to go to Mars, but not one of them has been able to get the funds available to do this. Talk without money will go absolutely nowhere.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
We can build ballistas today and we can rebuild Saturn V rockets if NASA wanted to do so. But NASA doesn't want to do so because rebuilding a Saturn V for today's needs is like restoring a 1964 Ford Mustang and expecting that it meets all current requirements of safety and features. There have been 50 years of development of rocketry since the Saturn V. Replicating one is going backwards. What the mission needs is a rocket with the same capacity as a Saturn V.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Most of those capabilities are unnecessary for either the moon or Mars, and aren't likely to ever be developed without active manned space exploration to drive the need for them.
What we really need is greatly reduced cost and deployed transportation infrastructure capable of frequent deliveries of large payloads, and people actually getting out there, discovering the problems that need to be solved, and working out solutions for them. Make it easy to get mass into orbit, and people will research stuff like magnetic shielding and advanced propulsion. Meanwhile, what we have is enough to start going to the moon and Mars. If SpaceX achieves their goals with BFR, the BFS will go straight from LEO to the surface of Mars with 150 t of payload and with a trip time short enough that simulated gravity, exotic radiation shielding, etc are unnecessary; then refuel and launch from Mars to land back on Earth. This isn't a tin can that can barely get a few humans there, it's a serious transport craft capable of supporting well-equipped research expeditions and colonization efforts. Blue Origin has similar ambitions focused around the moon.
The Lunar Orbiting Platform (or whatever they're calling it today), though...yeah, it's embarrassingly lacking in ambition and potential for meaningful progress. It can't even be occupied full time, and any reasonable lunar or Mars mission would blow right past it without wasting delta-v on rendezvous.
It could've existed if not for irrational fear of everything "atomic".
Guys who built them bombs in Manhattan Project were planning to personally cruise solar system in actual spaceships (size of a, well, ocean ship), propelled by detonation of small bombs behind, once a second. Physics and engineering actually worked!
Look up "Project Orion", or read George Dyson's book (his dad Freeman was one of the leaders).
Paul B.
A nuke spacecraft still requires reaction mass.
And ice on Luna is a wonderful source of reaction mass for a nerva-type drive. Especially since it is an order of magnitude or so easier to get to, say, L5 (or LEO) from Luna than from Earth.
Hell, it would be easier to get reaction mass from Mars to L5 (or LEO) than to get the same reaction mass from Earth....
IOW, yes, we still want bases on the Moon and probably Mars, even with a proper spaceship....
In the long term, it may be easier to get reaction mass from Saturn's rings than from Luna or Mars. I haven't even tried to run the numbers on that. But Saturn isn't an issue for a loooong time. The Moon and Mars are useful as a source of reaction mass for a long time before Saturn can be made useful....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Oh looky, triggered a Russian with mod points.
Slashdot might as well be The_Donald considering the concentration of MAGA racist neckbeards and russians.
This has not been a good week for the treasonous orange cunt. Noose is tightening. Womp womp..!
Just need to make sure the Russiapublican party goes down with him. Don't worry, Bob's on it.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.